Auto AK-47 - My First Grow

Hi everybody, this is my first time growing so go easy on me.

For my first grow I chose an autoflowering strain from Lowlife called Auto AK47. I chose this strain for a couple reasons. One is due to my small space to grow in. I built a box from 1/2 inch play wood, approximately 30in wide X 22in deep X 48in tall. Another is my limited budget. I chose the 150 watt HPS mini system from floralux and mylar for the walls. At just under $150 US dollars and a very small unit, im happy with my choice for now. However, I am starting to think about upgrading to a remote ballast 400 watt hps system in the near future. There is a 100cfm intake fan at the bottom of the box. I use an 80 cfm can fan to exhaust the air from the light shroud. There is an internal 6in circulation fan. Here are a couple pictures of my setup:

 GrowBox1.JPG   162.49K   704 downloads

 GrowBox2.JPG   223.03K   489 downloads

For soil I am using an organic mix from Happy Frog (FoxFarm). I also chose to use the FoxFarm nutrient system (GrowBig, BigBloom and TigerBloom). For my first grow I will be following their feeding instructions until I can get some input from you guys. Since the strain I am growing will flower automatically, I think I will have to change up the schedule a little so the flowers have the proper nutrients. Any help here would be much appreciated.

I purchased the 10 seeds from a UK shop online. I don't know if I am allowed to say from who on here, so I wont. If you guys want more info on that let me know. After the "Stealth" shipping and costs I ended up spending $78 US dollars total. Also, the Auto AK47 seems to be the only mostly sativa autoflowering strain I could find, which I prefer to smoke over an indica. There was a pleasant surprise of 1 free White Widow Feminized seed and 5 free Thai Super Skunk seeds in my package. I will use them for cross breeding some autoflowers later. The Thai is a mostly sativa strain also which should make for a nice cross.

Ok, so I started this journal late and need to get caught up. The plants live in 7L pots that have vent holes in the bottom for run off and breathing. I have been giving the plants 200 ml (about 1 cup) of water w/ nutrients everyday since the seeds sprouted. As of today the plants are 22 days old. I started with 10 seeds. Out of the 10 seeds I chose 6 of them to germinate using the paper towel method. Out of those 6, 5 germinated. Since one failed, of course I had to germinate another. After all, I have room for 6 and I love bud! So the more the marrier. Oh yea, and by law I am only allowed to have 6 mature plants.

I have since removed one male. I had 2 males so I threw on away and kept the strong beautiful one so I can get some seeds from my first run. Out of the 4 females, only 2 have started flowering. I am kind of bummed about the other 2. One of them is a runt and the other, though it is short, is more full then any of them. It is going to be a little tank. They will be fine im sure. From the looks of them they will start flowering any day now.

Well, here are some pics of the plants from week 1 to week 3. Sorry about my camera not being so good. I can not get very good close up shots with it so I will have to rely on the forums to trouble shoot my own plroblems. I have started to notice some yellowing of leaf tips (very slight) and a couple lower leaves have started showing signs faint signs of starting to yellow. I am thinking nute burn so I am going to start to only water every other day with fresh water only (no nutes) for a little while and see what happens.

 Week1.JPG   279.48K   363 downloads

 Week2.JPG   287.68K   347 downloads

 Week3a.JPG   280.03K   469 downloads

 Week3b.JPG   275.94K   512 downloads

Any comments and suggestions are welcome. I will be back shortly and will give weekly photo updates unless theres a request for pics. I have no problem updating anyone on some photos. Take it easy, see ya soon!

Edited by BtNugs, 24 June 2009 - 03:36 AM.

I did have one question. I need to seperate the male from the females so I can control the pollination instead of letting all the females seed entirely. Anyone know when I should do that? The male is about 18 days old now. About 4 days younger then the females.

Want to start off by saying sweet setup...i do not have the money or space to do this but i fo have my own auto ak47 going as well...check it out on my sig

I did have one question. I need to seperate the male from the females so I can control the pollination instead of letting all the females seed entirely. Anyone know when I should do that? The male is about 18 days old now. About 4 days younger then the females.

you might have to build a seperate location for the males....this might not be economically feasible for you but maybe you can just seperate the male as soon as you know its male...becuz the pollen sacs are very sensitve and they can pop at any time

Hey SirBuddington! Thanks for the reply and the compliment. I checked your cabinet and grow also. Very nice craftsmanship on the cabinet. I especially like the light mount you rigged up. I was sorry to hear about your mishap with your first seed order. I too got mine from the attitude seed bank and they arrived with no problem at all.

As for the male. I have another 20x20x40 box built from the scraps i had left over in another room. It has a 72w flourescent in it so I hope that will be fine for keeping the male alive long enough to get some pollen from him. I will make sure I get him over there today.

Edited by BtNugs, 13 April 2009 - 07:16 PM.

Just a little update.

I moved the male to his new home yesterday. You can see him here.

 Male.JPG   223.18K   380 downloads

Also, since I cleared some space and I have 3 seeds left over from my order I stuck another seed in some soil and added it to the room. I am going to try to germinate it directly in the soil. I just want to experiment a little and try to learn from my first experience. One major change is that I will not be giving this new plant any nutes until after the flowering period begins.

 Update1.JPG   308.05K   273 downloads

The male is 19 days old today and the females are 23 days. All but one female has begun flowering.

Edited by BtNugs, 14 April 2009 - 06:36 PM.

hey there btnugs! everything is lookin great so far man...keep it up! as for pollination, unless you reaaaally, reeaaally want/need some seeds for free dont do it. it will decrease your yield on the effected females along with potency. there have been a few threads on here about collecting some pollen from a male or 2, then carefully pollinating a branch or 2 on a female using a clear bag,etc.

i wish i could help you out more on that, but i havent tried to manually pollinate a branch,etc. good luck!

Looking good so far! I would read up on collecting pollen as squigglybears mentioned instead of letting your whole female get ravaged..lol.

Sweet, thanks for stopping by squiggly. Im gonna need all the luck I can get. I really really want seeds lol. I plan on doing some cross breeding of my own after this grow and it would be nice to have seeds on hand. Though, im sure the attitude seed bank will be happy if it doesnt work

If someone with some experience pollenating auto's could post some info in here, such as when to start pollenating the females and how long until the seeds mature, I would greatly appreciate it....thanks!

Hey man great lookin setup. I was lookin at the same floralux mini a while back but decided i actually needed the heat of a non aircooled 150 so i got the cheaper sunsystem. I like the strain as well. i have yet to play with the dwarfs, but ak-47 is always a good choice. good luck ill be following this

jbyrd, hey bro good to see ya. I couldn't agree more man. And that male will be camp fire kindling before he ravages any of my babies!!

Hi sdholic, good to see you too mang. Unfortunately I live in a very warm climate and with summer right around the corner, I figured I better plan for it. Its a lot easier to keep my place warm in the winter then cool in the summer. So I smoked stress for a couple weeks instead of making a run to the dispencery and forked out a few extra bucks for the light

Hey I stopped by and checked out your grow and had a question for ya. I noticed you dont grow dwarf plants and your hieght is as limited is mine. Whats the trick to keeping them short?

Edited by BtNugs, 14 April 2009 - 10:20 PM.

jbyrd, hey bro good to see ya. I couldn't agree more man. And that male will be camp fire kindling before he ravages any of my babies!!

Hi sdholic, good to see you too mang. Unfortunately I live in a very warm climate and with summer right around the corner, I figured I better plan for it. Its a lot easier to keep my place warm in the winter then cool in the summer. So I smoked stress for a couple weeks instead of making a run to the dispencery and forked out a few extra bucks for the light

Hey I stopped by and checked out your grow and had a question for ya. I noticed you dont grow dwarf plants and your hieght is as limited is mine. Whats the trick to keeping them short?

Hey man, i hear you on the heat issues. I used to live in florida so i know what thats all about...

As far as keeping those girls short, i LST the shit out of em. The one on the left is tied over at a 60 degree angle and all the side stems and branching turn up toward the light. There are 18ish legit budsites off that one 18 inch plant. Also i trim heavily soon before and into flowering to allow all the potential light energy to hit budsites exclusively. I still trim a few lower areas of growth every couple days and im at the 4th week into flowering now. The stretch is slowing down and the budsite activity is going nuts. All the surrounding leaves are already heavily coated in crystals and smell wonderful.

The one on the right was a runt and i only kept it when i discovered that the other larger plant was a male. So i figured id get another 15ish grams off the little girl if i play my cards right.

A big advantage of smallish plants with any HID lamp under 400w or so, is the proximity of the budsites allowing you to lower the light, 150w, in this case, as close as fucking possible to those girls while still covering all the plants. Light energy disintegrates exponentially as you raise the light, so the closer the better. Sure you already know all that stuff but point being small is probably always more efficient with a lower power HPS like ours.

So i flower around 3 weeks assuming im working with bushy branchy indicas like i have currently, and LST staring around week 2 until harvest.

Best wishes, ill have some high res pics up on my log in the next few days and the LST will be obvious. Its cool how much potential shows in an 18inch plant when its tied over sideways. The larger, denser buds tend to come from the thickest stalks, so giving all the light you can to the thickest parts of the plant, ie the main stalk (or stalks), seems like the way to go.

Scrog is also a great options. To be honest i went with LST initally due to my own lazyness not wanting to put a screen together and mount it to my DWC and all. Love it now though and its simple as pie.

Ok done rambling.

Edited by sdholic, 15 April 2009 - 06:12 AM.

Ahh ok, now that you explain it I can see it in the pictures. I'm not quite sure what LST is but is that the acronym for the bending of the plant? That is some really cool info, thanks bro. I am going to use that in my next grow. I noticed you mentioned indica, is this method still ok with sativa strains? ..if not, I guess the white widow is next in line

Ahh ok, now that you explain it I can see it in the pictures. I'm not quite sure what LST is but is that the acronym for the bending of the plant? That is some really cool info, thanks bro. I am going to use that in my next grow. I noticed you mentioned indica, is this method still ok with sativa strains? ..if not, I guess the white widow is next in line

Thats correct. LST = low stress training. So yep, it just means bending the plant. There are dozens of techniques and opinions out there on when to start training (bending the plant). But i start at the 4th node after a week or two of veg and just keep tieing that sucker down and keep the main stalks at approximately the same level. A lot of times its easier to train it along the outside of whatever container your using. In your case that'd mean you'd have the stalk tied over and trained in a circle around the outside of your bucket. All the colas or main budsites will grow primarily off of this circular stem you have tied down and will all get a similar amount of light.

Indicas tend to be characterized by short, bushy plants with wider leaves that will often overlap eachother. Sativas are pretty much the opposite with a taller stretchier stature and greater spacing between nodes (main branching sites). They also tend to have a longer flowering period and are a bit less forgiving.

So as far as LST with sativas go, YES absolutely you can LST a sativa. Its still just a plant and will respond similarly to its sister the indica. However, u should keep in mind that its going to stretch much more and will require alot more attention and tieing and retieing that girl down to keep her from stretching so much.

Lastly, white widows, while they are predominately sativa most times, they are a much shorter than a haze for instance. White widows are great since the 40%ish indica genetics of it makes it grow like a bush and smoke like a haze. Sorta lol. Its a great plant. Hard to describe though.

So go for it on the widows and tie the shit out of em. One of my girls wasnt tied down at all until 2nd week of flower and it still was very responsive and submissive to the tie down. Ive had great success with the botanicare pure blend nutrients and they work with soil and hydro. Just a note if you looking into any other nutrients. Really easy and only like 14 bucks a bottle.

Any new pics man! I feel ya on the warm climate, I'm a little north of Santa Barbara and we see temperatures like Paso Robles...up in the 100's in the summer. I picked up a used but almost new A/C unit on Craigslist for 200$ and run my lights as close to night time hours as possible. Right now my flowering cycle is lights on 7:30pm - 7:30am in preparation for the heat. Freakin California, one minute it's 60 and blowing 50 miles per hour and the next it's 105 and hot/dry/miserable...lol.

Peace!

Yikes!!!! Well, something very unfortunate happened. I guess the male didnt like his new home. One side of the plant took damage and I have no idea why. Here is a pic but I dont think you can see it very well.

 DamagedMale.JPG   264.76K   361 downloads

I know it wasn't heat damage as it doesnt get hot at all in that box. Kind of weird for it to happen overnight like that. So I put him back in with the females. Looks like he is going to gt to have his way with them after all ...If he even makes it alive.

The rest of the girls are doing great. Lots of flower sights starting to appear. It is going to be sad to see them go to seed. Here is a new pic.

 24days.JPG   291.65K   309 downloads

I will try to get a hold of a better camera soon.

Yikes!!!! Well, something very unfortunate happened. I guess the male didnt like his new home. One side of the plant took damage and I have no idea why. Here is a pic but I dont think you can see it very well.

[ATTACH]199506[/ATTACH]

I know it wasn't heat damage as it doesnt get hot at all in that box. Kind of weird for it to happen overnight like that. So I put him back in with the females. Looks like he is going to gt to have his way with them after all ...If he even makes it alive.

The rest of the girls are doing great. Lots of flower sights starting to appear. It is going to be sad to see them go to seed. Here is a new pic.

[ATTACH]199507[/ATTACH]

I will try to get a hold of a better camera soon.

Just an option to think about. If you want to confine the pollenation of females, so you still get true sinsemilla females as well, you could pinch the pollen sack once they begin to form and then remove the male. Now you have the ability to pollenate just the areas/plants you want. Granted pollen tends to spread a bit, but you will have a greater amount of control over where you get buds and where you get seeds.
Just a thought

Just an option to think about. If you want to confine the pollenation of females, so you still get true sinsemilla females as well, you could pinch the pollen sack once they begin to form and then remove the male.

Yo sdholic, sorry im still new to this growing, do you mean to manually burst open the pollen sacks over the area of the female I want seeded? I could definetly do that if it will work. That way all the new flowers that form will not seed. I would be happy with just getting a dozen seeds or so. If i do that right now, are the females mature enough to accept the pollen?

Thanks for sharing all your knowledge man. You have been a huge help.

hey man things are looking good so far. your plants are a really good size. they should get pretty big in the next few weeks. im growing the auto AK47 x auto Hindu Kush and one of them is 19" tall now! can't wait to see some buds from ya!

i gotta say though, you should keep that male out of there. i know you really want seeds but he could ruin your whole crop. yeah you might end up with thousands of seeds but all the time and effort on growing those plants will be waisted.

check out this method by Ricardo. starts at post 52.
http://forum.grassci...new-toys-4.html

i was going to do this but i decided i would wait till me second attempt. i still have 7 seeds;)

good luck man! ill stick around for this one.

Hey freez! Wow, that looks very difficult lol. I am willing to give it a shot though. Would you happen to know when the male and females are ready to do that? The male seems to have a decent amount of pollen sacks on it but them females still dont have a lot of flowers. Thanks for the post bro.

Yo sdholic, sorry im still new to this growing, do you mean to manually burst open the pollen sacks over the area of the female I want seeded? I could definetly do that if it will work. That way all the new flowers that form will not seed. I would be happy with just getting a dozen seeds or so. If i do that right now, are the females mature enough to accept the pollen?

Thanks for sharing all your knowledge man. You have been a huge help.

Ya man that link freez gave you is perfect. More overkill than what i've seen. But it sounds fool proof. Since your in soil you could also move your male and one selected female outside and let em do their thing ya know. But thats if you have a yard or patio that gets enough sunlight...

Or you could always just leave him in there with the ladies and AS SOON as you see the first few pollen sacks drop get him out and get rid of him. Granted just a little bit a pollen in a enclosed area with good air movement could very well seed every plant, but at least you'd get more bud than if he stayed in their till the end.

Good luck with whatever u decide.

edit: Thanks for the rep man, theres a lot smarter folks on here than me. But ive dealt with a ton a problems in my first attempts last year and picked up a lot of info cause of it. Cant wait to see some bud on those girls!

Edited by sdholic, 16 April 2009 - 08:27 PM.